In one of the other internet spaces I inhabit, there is a challenge going on where the first prompt was to introduce yourself. This is a fandom-specific challenge that was started in an effort to remind themselves about what they loved in fandom and since then it’s been a staple every January. It got me thinking about introductions and how they differ, depending on the place and situation.
For the most part with me, what you see is what you get (I’m shorter in person and older than I look, but the babble is the same) – the levels of formality differ whether I’m at home or on the job, but that’s true of most people. I was fortunate enough to be born into a very nerd-friendly family and encouraged in a lot of my early nerding over fandoms. Even still, I’m old enough to remember a time where fandoms weren’t as mainstream as some are now. Where disclaimers were the top note on everything fandom-related, especially fanfiction. No one wanted to be sued and we’d all heard the horror stories.
This was before Fanlore and A03 were even a thing, really. Before MySpace really got started and Facebook wasn’t a thing. We had Angelfire and Geocities and Tripod webpages, there were Yahoo!Groups and mailing lists so you could keep up with the fanfic works in progress you were reading. Or what your favorite fic author was doing next. There are friends I’ve made in one fandom that have carried over into others. Some I shared with them and some they’ve shared with me.
It hasn’t always been sunshine and daisies. There’ve been rough patches, some of them uglier than others, but for the most part, fandom has been one of the most influential things for me. A kind of central cornerstone of this life that I’ve built up, over the last couple of decades. I am who I am in no small part because of fandom.